A few months ago I came across these charming alphabet cards. I particularly liked them as they introduce both capital and small letters in a very associative and visual way. Ale already knows many Russian and English letters as we often talk about them a bit while reading our bed time stories. But the idea that same letter can have two different versions was rather confusing for him. And while in Montessori approach it is recommended to only introduce small letters at first, I found this to be impractical as all the books have both letters on their covers and naturally the subject of small and capital letters would always come into our discussions when we would start reading our bedtime stories.

So in these cards a small and a big version of the same letter is very nicely tied together through the same animal — the grown up one for the capital letter and a baby one for the small letter.

A few months we got Ale his first table and chairs. I had many beautiful (and expensive!!) children furniture pieces bookmarked in my Pinterest boards. But considering what children’s possessions can go through in their exploration of the physical universe I knew that in the real world I needed some furniture pieces which Ale could comfortably sit on, eat on…draw on, bang thing on, climb on, spill things and so on and so forth 🙂 So IKEA Latt table + chairs set was a perfect choice. Just $25!! And it is made from solid wood, with the exception of table top and chair seats, both of which you can replace with real wood to eliminate any off-gasing ingredients.